Glints and Flashes
by tepid sponge bath
Summary: Akabane Kuroudo and Kagami Kyouji meet by chance in Mugenjou. And they are both in the mood for blood.


**Disclaimer**: As much as I wish that I owned _Get Backers_, I don't, and I do not profit from this in any way that involves forms of recognized legal tender.

**Glints and Flashes**

Chance. That was all there was to it. Akabane had been hired to deliver a package to somewhere in Mugenjou (to where and whom exactly, he'd never say, being professional to the core, and if you asked...Doctor Jackal is a practical man, and scalpels are sharp, and dead men tell no tales), and Kagami happened to be watching something along the Transporter's return route (he wouldn't tell you what it was either, if only for the consternation that would spread across your face). Doctor Jackal has often wondered what his calling-card 'J' would look like on the back of that white, white suit. Kagami has entertained similar fantasies of bogging down the good doctor with enough diamond dust, seeing just how fast the man can _really _move.

Chance, and a hint of interest. That's all it takes.

There isn't anyone else around. You don't last long in Mugenjou if you can't sense trouble coming, and either of there men, on his own, could put in a fair bid for being trouble incarnate. And the two of them – _well._

They circle, slowly. It's on their own terms that they meet now – nobody else's agendas and no professional obligations to honor before having their fun. Polite greetings, with the blood lust riding just beneath the surface, are exchanged. They close in. They meet.

It's insanely fast. You would have nothing to watch but the occasional flutter of black or white, and the flashes and glints as a scalpel or mirror catches the light. There is a brief lull as Kagami pulls his trick with the mirrors, kaleidoscope-like, creating a multitude of perfect reflections, each one indistinguishable from the rest and from the original. Akabane takes a moment to wonder at the physics of it, but his answer is a swift Bloody Rain. When in doubt, after all, you can always break the glass.

It works: the mirrors crack, shatter, and the real Kagami loses a little blood. He grabs a fistful of diamond dust, prepares to use it. Jackal sees what he is up to, and heads him off. Kagami's trump card, he knows from experience, is something he can beat, but it is…_uncomfortable_ to say the least, and he would rather avoid it if he can. He puts on a burst of speed, shoulders Kagami to the nearest wall, pins him there with his forearm. Akabane smirks to himself as he does this: the move isn't characteristic of his style, and is, in fact, rather reminiscent of Midou Ban. This amuses him.

The diamond dust is, however, knocked out of Kagami's hand. The Transporter inhales mouthful, a noseful, and commences to cough and splutter, hunched over painfully, blood from innumerable minuscule cuts on his lips and tongue and nose staining the immaculately white shoulder of Kagami's suit. By all rights the man from the upper reaches of Babylon City should have gotten away then, but he has been winded, something that does not happen often, and, as such, he finds it a little difficult to recover.

"I wonder at your diamond dust, Kagami-kun," says Jackal conversationally, licking the blood from his lips.

"I wouldn't ask about your scalpels, Akabane-san." There is a hint of reproach there, a reminder of a breach of etiquette. And as he speaks, Kagami's hand moves, almost imperceptibly, maybe to take up a shard of glass, maybe to push Jackal away. Motive doesn't matter. It doesn't work anyway.

A scalpel appears in Akabane's hand, and almost in the same instant, it is in Kagami's hand, piercing the flesh and pinning it neatly to the cement of the wall behind him. Being a medical man, Jackal has had the delicacy to avoid damaging the bones.

Kagami bites his lip to avoid the indignity of crying out. His free hand goes for one of his mirrors, faster now, so that when the second scalpel hits he is already holding a bit of looking-glass. The pain from the shattered glass burying into his palm and the cold metal of the blade is exquisite. He bites down harder, and a fat, deep red bead blossoms on his lower lip. Jackal leans forward, and, without pomp, without circumstance, licks it off. His tongue still carries some diamond dust, and it traces a fine web of cuts on Kagami's mouth and chin. The Transporter tilts the other man's chin up with one of his gloved hands – the white a little grubby now, and a little stained, though the mess is nothing like Kagami's suit – and forces his mouth open in a harsh, diamond dust-laced kiss.

And that kiss is just where it starts.

When he is done, Akabane Kuroudo adjusts his tie, his belt, pulls his gloves back on. He picks up his hat from where it has fallen, directs a nod at Kagami by way of a fare-you-well, and leaves, the smooth roll of his hips just visible underneath his great black coat. If you watched him closely, you would say that he had a new spring in his step (though probably not where the good doctor could hear you).

As for Kagami, he is feeling a little worse for wear. His suit is beyond any glimmer of a hope of repair, what with the blood and the dirt and the cuts, and he is feeling sore in places he rather wouldn't mention in polite circles. He sits up groggily, leaning against the wall, experimentally flexing his hands. Nothing they couldn't deal with in the upper reaches of Babylon City, but, _Christ,_ they hurt.

Jackal has at least had the courtesy to take the scalpels out. Kagami will remember that the next time they meet.

He'll leave the mirrors in.


End file.
